


bad boyfriend(s)

by scioscribe



Category: Smash
Genre: Backstory, Canon Gay Character, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-20
Updated: 2012-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:27:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/344055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Never, ever tell someone you don’t like their boyfriend, or, a whole bunch of times that Derek screwed up Tom’s love life, thus ensuring Tom’s not-really-that-eternal hatred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bad boyfriend(s)

**Author's Note:**

> Why, exactly, I wrote _Smash_ -fic when only two episodes have aired and I still had to look up _everyone's_ last name, and double-check an embarrassing number of first names, I can't honestly tell you. I'm sure this will all prove horribly OOC later on.
> 
> But Tom just seems like an awfully nice guy to have such an incredible hatred of Derek, especially since Derek seems, if anything, mildly fond of him, and capable of being a decent human being (in those whole _two episodes of canon_ that I have so far, anyway), and so I decided to do up an explanation, complete with mush. There's also a much, much more obvious explanation than this, but seriously, there was already a story about that elsewhere, despite the whole Only Two Episodes issue, so I had to take a different angle.

When Derek first met Tom, they were working on reheated _Chicago_ , off-off-Broadway, and Tom was dating some jackass who never took off his motorcycle jacket. Derek hadn’t known before then that gay men could be as obnoxiously, insistently macho as straight men, and inasmuch as Motorcycle Jacket struck a blow for equality, Derek loathed him, and felt—though would never have said—that Tom deserved much better. Tom: excellent composer, intelligent, going places. Handsome in an undeniably puppy-like fashion. Motorcycle Jacket—

“The American coinage for it,” Julia told him, “is _douche_.”

Derek considered it. “I can see that.”

They were eating lukewarm craft-services turkey sandwiches on stale bread and watching as Tom and Motorcycle Jacket had yet another argument over Tom working late.

“He has to work late,” Derek said—Tom and Julia were still doing rewrites of someone else’s material, trying to bring it up to standard. “So there’s no point in fussing about it.”

“I know,” Julia said, and licked mayonnaise off her fingers.

They watched Tom throw his hands up in the air and Motorcycle Jacket threaten to storm off, his shoulders squared as if he really, really wanted to go, but his feet dragging as if he didn’t, actually, have any intention of it. Making a scene. They were in theater; they knew what they were looking at. Tom was just too close to see it. Derek had exactly zero patience with this shit.

“I wouldn’t put up with it. _He_ shouldn’t put up with it.”

“You date _women_ ,” Julia said.

He glanced sideways at her. “Point?”

“Women are more understanding about you having to work.” She shrugged. “Frank’s an exception.”

“Then Tom should find an exception,” Derek said, “and you, being all cuddly with him, should say so. –Oh, now he’s inventing a dinner engagement that they had, when you bloody well know they didn’t.” He’d only been on the job three weeks, but he could already tell that Tom wasn’t the kind of man who forgot plans that he’d made. His contempt for Motorcycle Jacket increased.

“Derek,” Julia said incredulously, “you never tell someone you don’t like their boyfriend.”

It occurred to him somewhat later that he might have stayed friendly with Tom if he had taken that warning seriously, but he hadn’t, and when, a week later, Motorcycle Jacket crashed a rehearsal and tried to drag Tom out, acting all wounded that Tom had forgotten some half-invented anniversary of a first kiss or something, Derek snapped, and told him that if he didn’t fuck off out of the theater, he’d call security—which they didn’t have—and have him dragged out behind his cheap import motorbike until he learned some fucking manners.

And when it came to the burgeoning new friendship of Derek and Tom—that about put the knife in _that_.

 

The next time Derek made an ass out of himself over Tom’s boyfriend—Tom’s words, not his—was two years later. He wasn’t even working with Tom and Julia then, so it ought to have been harder than it was to further fuck up Tom’s already fucked-up love life, but he, bless him, did it without even trying.

Tom was—unbeknownst to Derek—dating an art dealer with slicked-back hair and an ascot, and Derek was sleeping with two willowy brunettes and a somewhat bustier blonde, for variety’s sake.

All he did was run into Tom while he was getting coffee, and he’d thought, well, no harm in making conversation, interminable as the line was, and it had been two years since he’d shouted at Tom’s douche of a boyfriend, so he said, “Hello,” as evenly as he could manage, waiting to see how Tom would respond.

Tom seemed to have decided to give him a second chance. “Oh, hey.” Then one of those awkward pauses that Americans seemed to feel would slaughter them if they let it be. “You’re doing choreography for The Producers now, right? I saw it last Friday.”

“Like it?”

Tom grinned, and Derek remembered why he’d liked him so much, early on: like most devoutly cynical men, he had a weakness for intelligent optimism, and Tom was like fucking sunlight when he smiled. Though it was possible that Broadway was giving Derek certain susceptibilities that he hadn’t noticeably had before, and soon they would all be working on _Kinsey! The Musical_. He shook his head, nixing it, and brought his attention back to the conversation, where Tom was saying, “ _Loved_ it.”

“In that case, yes,” Derek said, “I am doing the choreography.”

Tom snorted. “Hey, listen,” he said, as they inched up in line, “I know I got pissed at you before, but I shouldn’t have. Bryan—really wasn’t a very nice guy.”

“I never saw him out of that damned motorcycle jacket,” Derek said musingly. “I’m just hoping you did.”

Tom raised his eyebrows.

Derek said, “Anyway, I assume you’re doing better now, because you could hardly have done worse.” He glanced up to the cash register, trying to estimate when, exactly, he would get the privilege of overpaying by a good three hundred percent for a cup of high-fructose-corn-syrup laced coffee in a distinctive cup when he saw a tall man wearing an ascot arguing with the barrista (who looked all of fifteen) about whether or not there was genuine orange peel in the scones. “Unless you started dating _that_ jackass,” he said, pointing.

Tom’s smile disappeared in a hurry.

Trying to hastily further his position by noting that someone would have to be a complete dick to leave his boyfriend waiting all the way at the back of the line just while he squabbled about orange peel—did not endear him to Tom particularly, as it turned out.

 

He ran into Julia not long after that, and while they were trading gossip about their shows, she said, “So, have you considered why, exactly, you’ve decided to sabotage all of Tom’s relationships?”

“He broke up with Orange Peel, then,” Derek said.

“He broke up with _Scott_ ,” Julia said. “Why can you never remember these names?”

“Technically I was never introduced to this one. And it isn’t like it’s a pattern. I’ve only done it twice.”

“All I’m saying is that I’m suspicious of your motivations.”

“And Tom?”

“Thinks that you’re a horrible human being.” She put her sunglasses back on, apparently getting ready to leave him for the greater glory of another polishing session, and added, “And he's seeing someone new, in case your subconscious wants to drive you to inexplicably ruin that.”

 

The third time Derek inexplicably ruined Tom’s relationship was three weeks after his encounter with Julia. It was almost midnight and pouring down rain that kept threatening to turn into sleet; Derek was trying to flag down a cab without leaving the shelter of the awning when he saw Tom huddled up on himself, not at all dressed for the weather, a little further down the street. He’d pushed himself back into an alcove to keep out of the rain. Derek sighed, flipped up his collar to keep the sleet from hitting the back of his neck, and strode over.

“Share a cab?” he called out over the splattering of the rain against the pavement.

Tom looked as though he were weighing his hatred of Derek against the prospect of continuing to stand out in the rain. “Fine,” he said, and when the next one came along, they both ducked into it and sat shivering in the back, hands stretched out in front of the heater for a second before they gave directions to the driver.

“Thanks,” Tom said.

“Well, you weren’t really dressed for it, were you,” Derek said flatly. He wasn’t going to get drawn into Tom’s dislike of him if he could help it.

“I thought I had a ride,” Tom said, matching his tone for sheer stiffness, which annoyed him for some reason.

“Well, whoever it was clearly had no intention of coming to get you, considering it’s ten till midnight and pouring, and if you’re willing to share a cab with _me_ , you’ve obviously been waiting a while, so I’d go out on a limb and say that your prospective ride is a bit of a—” He looked at the rigid, almost masklike cast of Tom’s face in the dim lit of the taxi and said, a little too late, “Of course, if it’s your boyfriend, I’m sure he—had his reasons.”

The cab ride ended with Tom claiming once again that Derek was a terrible person who lived to sabotage his relationships by exaggerating the slightest flaws.

“I can’t be _too_ terrible,” Derek said, “because you haven’t started dating me yet, have you?”

“You know what?” Tom said. “I think I’ll walk.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Derek said. “I’m sure your boyfriend will be happy to make you soup when you inevitably catch pneumonia.”

“You’re a complete monster,” Tom said, but he stayed in the car.

 

The next time Derek saw Julia, all she had to say to him was, “Really? _Really_ , Derek?”

“He had the good sense to drop Left Him in the Rain, it isn’t exactly my fault.”

“He wasn't dating some Central Casting Native American extra from a John Wayne movie, Derek,” she said. “His name was—well, is, Tom didn’t kill him, not that I know of anyway—Adam, and he’s a lawyer.”

“How terrific for him. Did you like him?”

“No,” she said, as if that should have been obvious. “I hated him, he was an asshole. But I’m Tom’s best friend, and if _I_ can keep my mouth shut about his taste in men, so can you, because you barely know him.”

That was such an undeniably good point that he had nothing to say in response to it, which made Julia smirk at him.

 

A month before _Marilyn_ , Derek bumped into Tom in a Whole Foods. Tom glared at him. Derek tried unsuccessfully to muster up some strong reaction in response, but couldn’t—bastard though he may have been, so far as he could tell, his major sin towards Tom so far was thinking that he deserved better than to be left standing out in the rain at a quarter till midnight, and “I feel unjustly persecuted by you” didn’t make for an easy facial expression, particularly when he was holding a jar of organic olives in one hand and pushing a cart with the other. It defanged any potential menace.

Tom wouldn’t have fared any better, either, since he was carrying an enormous baguette, but Tom, Derek suspected, had no actual menace to defang.

“Hello, Tom,” he said.

“I’m not seeing anyone right now,” Tom said, “so I guess it’s safe to talk to you.”

“I’ve heard good things about _Heaven and Earth_ ,” Derek said.

“Haven’t seen it, though?”

“Considered it. Thought you probably wouldn’t let me in the theater.”

Tom shrugged. “Take your chances this Saturday and find out. Julia will comp you a ticket, she likes you.” The unspoken implication being that Tom, of course, didn’t.

Well, Derek didn’t care very much if Tom liked him or not, frankly: it was none of his concern.

Tom’s attention drifted over somewhere behind Derek. Derek turned his head a little and saw who Tom was looking at: a tall, good-looking blond man who was scrutinizing grapefruit. Obviously gay—you didn’t spend a significant amount of time working on the Great White Way without being able to tell at a moment’s notice—and just as obviously an awful human being. Derek said, “You can’t be serious. He’s wearing socks with Birkenstock sandals and why, exactly, does he have on flower-patterned surfing gear in the middle of a supermarket in Manhattan?”

Tom blinked. Derek watched the obvious horribleness of the man wash over him.

Tom said, “I really do _hate_ you,” took his baguette, and left.

 

Derek was becoming increasingly convinced that Tom was sleeping with his assistant, Ellis Something or Other, or, as Derek liked to think of him, Eavesdropping Little Know-it-All. He was determined to keep his mouth shut about it because they were all stuck with each other throughout _Marilyn_ ’s run and because, in Tom’s ordinary roster of complete bastards, Ellis seemed reasonably harmless. _Julia_ , of all people, kept coming to him and suggesting that he might want to say something snippy about him to Tom, since Julia—whom Derek had always thought of as a particularly reasonable person—loathed Eavesdropping Little Know-it-All with a fiery passion, but Derek was content, this time, to let someone else bugger up Tom’s relationship. He wasn’t going anywhere near it.

This firm resolution lasted him all the way up to the off-Broadway premiere of _Marilyn_ , when Tom came in with a giant bruise on his cheek.

Derek said, “Excuse me, love,” to Ivy, and went off to kill someone.

He found Ellis pinning up a copy of the opening night program to a bulletin board and didn’t even wait for him to turn around before he said, “You’re fired.”

Ellis spun slowly on one heel, program still in hand, and said, utterly bewildered, “You _can’t_ fire me. I’m _Tom’s_ assistant.”

“Okay,” Derek said, jaw tight. “I’ll rephrase. Get the fuck out of this theater and don’t come back, fired or not, or I'll beat the living shit out of you, and then I’m going to call everyone on Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-off-off-Broadway to make damned sure that you can’t get a job mopping up the stage after the horse craps on it in _Aida_ , all _right_?”

“Derek, what the _hell_?”

Enter Tom.

Derek pointed at him. “You can mark this down as yet another time I ruined your life by separating you from a complete asshole if you like, but there’s no way he’s working here when he did _that_ to you. This is _Broadway_ , it isn’t fucking Hollywood, where you can do whatever you like.” Though, come to think, he was fairly sure that if you were only someone’s irritatingly tolerated assistant, there was nowhere where you could do whatever you liked, but he didn’t want to go into all that.

“Tom—” Ellis said, pleadingly, and Tom said, “Go see if they need anything in the front of the house, all right?” and sent him off.

He turned back to Derek with a surprisingly bemused expression that looked off-kilter with the bruise.

“Your dating history,” Derek began, and Tom cut him off.

“First of all,” he said, “this—” pointing to his bruised face, “is because someone in the chorus kicked me last during the run-through while you were out, and no, I’m not telling you who, because you scare everyone already without threatening to ban them from theater for life. And _two_ —no matter what you and Julia think, I’m not dating Ellis.” He smiled, and it was the first time Derek had seen him do it in a while, and it was, even with the bruise, lovely. “I’m dating Dennis.”

“Dennis the—Dennis _here_?”

“Yeah,” Tom said, sticking his hands in his pockets and continuing to smile shyly. “Surprisingly not an asshole, right?”

It was, in fact, an unprecedentedly good match. Back when he’d been working on The Producers, Derek had briefly considered whether or not Matthew Broderick would be flexible enough to go on a date with Tom so he could have someone nice for a change, but he hadn’t considered Dennis—he had a distinct aversion to seeing his dancers as people—who was oddly Tom-like, all things considered. Not bad on the floor, either, though sometimes his ankle shook if he held a position too long. Probably that wasn’t something that would affect his dating life overmuch, though.

“Very happy to see your taste has improved,” Derek said dryly, wondering exactly how embarrassed he should be over all this, and whether he actually had to send flowers or something to Ellis for accusing him of practicing domestic violence in addition to being the world’s most passive aggressive assistant. He’d send him an orchid and wait for Julia to try firing him again, probably. Just because he wasn’t fucking Tom didn’t meant that Derek had to like him any more than he had before. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an actual show to put on in an hour, if you don’t mind, so we’ll leave your love life to sort itself out for once.”

“You were worried about me!” Tom called after him, sounding incredibly and somehow adorably smug. “I’m going to tell everyone that you’re actually nice!”

“Have we got a fucking show to do or not?” he yelled back.

But even as he turned the corner, he could hear Tom laughing.


End file.
